Can an amateur cyclist finish the Tour de France?

[Music] [Music] is it possible for an average bloke to ride all 21 stages of the tour de france the tour de france is the premier cycle race on the world circuit it has existed for over 100 years now it is the biggest race for professional cyclists in the world it's normally around three and a half thousand kilometers in length generally 21 stages over 23 days you know it's the pinnacle of the sport for a cyclist if they win a stage in the tour de france don't even have to win a jersey or something just winning one of those stages in one of those races is a sort of you know career highlight [Music] [Music] i i needed to get a second opinion someone who's actually ridden the tour de france so this guy of course was a certain hayden ralston jonathan just contacted me one day uh out of the blue i didn't know jonathan um and yeah he told me his sort of plans you know we had we had the idea of riding all 21 stages of the tour de france uh one day ahead and it just sort of went from there and as time come closer you know things started to get more and more serious and i was like yeah it's really going to happen bruce thompson i'm an aircraft technician i'm an accountant i work at victoria university a project manager for building company i'm a gp i'm a planning consultant i'm a chartered accountant by profession i'm currently unemployed i left my job to go ride the tour de france make sure all these little bumps because there's about five little bumps coming up that everyone just rides up them you know just actually enjoy enjoy it rather than like sitting on it because it does get harder and there's no room in the car [Music] really early on in the piece i saw an advertisement johnny had put up to go to ride the 2018 tour de france i thought you know that looks cool but then immediately wrote it off there's there's no way i can sort of find the time um or the money to do something like that got in at work and had a look and thought that just looked stupid but it sat on my mind for a very long time and initially i dismissed it and then i mulled over it for about two or three days and you go you know what you only live once and really that's not that much in the course of a lifetime so i rang up jonathan and see if i could make the grade i knew i'd get eight guys i didn't know if they'd be able to complete it knowing that you know some of the professional cyclists take seven hours to complete a tough mountain station tour de france but you know each day will have its own particular challenges and it may not necessarily be on the bike it may be sickness or it may be transfers or it may be the stage itself there's so many other variables that can come into play oh i'm getting a little bit nervous now hasn't really kicked in until uh it's now stage one about two hours away so um yeah i think we can take it pretty easy today so i'd hope maybe seven hours excluding stops maybe eight hours including stops depends how long we have for lunch so i mean it's just um i think a matter of clearing your head as much as anything um making sure that you haven't forgotten anything got my gps on got the course for today loaded bottles on the bike sun cream on shammy cream on the next days will get easier and easier as we sort of slot into knowing what to do and when and and all that stuff but yeah i think i think we're ready so study study [Music] heavy when the heart gets heavy dropped alone by the way keep your head up when the day gets better bend the night [Music] study [Music] it's just starting to bite that a little bit now after 100k no just taking a hundred cases a long way now i think a hundred k's and stuff oh that's the first half of the first half of the first stage who would you ever thought i'd be here doing this i had a dream when i was a young fellow but it was never a reality then it's a bit of a pinch yourself to realize that's actually real we're doing it so yeah very exciting [Music] [Music] bit of relief got to the end of stage one which was obviously the first mission bloody sensational day starting to get a bit emotional remembering what it's all for it's bloody good bloody sensational uh i've known a couple of suicides um my sister being one um brother and mate of mine also um had other family members that have kind of been touched by mental health as probably most people have mental health has always been a challenge for me and for members of my family it's it's a tough one because it's not like you've got a broken arm people can see it or that you can see it part of the reason i wanted to ride was for the cause and to bring it to the forefront get people talking about it one thing we all had in common was that we'd all been affected majorly or minorly by mental health issues of some sort i was diagnosed with depression about i think it was seven or seven or eight years ago you know the reason i was there was because of the mental health foundation [Music] first period is probably the most vital because everyone feels great there everyone's a champion in the first half of any stage the first half of any race everyone's a winner but it's not about that it's actually about getting to the point where people start to tire and still having energy in the muscles you know hayden has told us just take it easy guys you've got to go really easy on those days and of course we didn't [Music] [Applause] i never thought about this i knew the elves are tough and the pyrenees are up and down but i didn't appreciate what that was like big open roads little narrow roads happened here flip don't really know quite exactly how hot it was but when we stopped my garmin said it was 32 degrees working on the tan two days riding [Music] it was fascinating to see you know the different walks of life jonathan had found these people you come up with the idea um to ride all 21 stages you come up with the idea that it's all for a charity so you've got your purpose you've got your goal then you've got to do the hard bit you've got to find the people first thing what's it there's a wide varied range of people here how's this going to gel together over 23 days in pretty trying circumstances there's eight of us are basically strangers coming together we're doing long days on the bike all the recipes there to get grumpy and snitchy with each other i'm introverted and you know we would wake up in the morning and the moment you open your eyes you know a teammate would be there having breakfast together and after you know two or three days i was like man i'm exhausted i kind of realized it wasn't it wasn't exhaustion from the writing it was exhaustion from the constant company we knew it was going to get harder but i really don't think any of us knew exactly how hard it was going to get each day after that just under 216 k's that'll be a record for me today uh and 2799 vertical meters so i might just do an extra meter just to round it out to 2 8. today is the first i think um tough stage uh quite cool now uh but by mid afternoon it's going to be um up there in the um late 20s quite a bit of fear like holy this is a long day and it's like oh if i get treated i'll get through today all right and then how am i going to feel tomorrow right [Applause] [Music] a here i'm feeling the change [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh it's not big boy country today not enough for dinner last night possibly not enough sleep either and just um it's only when i'm feeling a bit down the cluster yeah she's like riding a sauna out there today right well as soon as you start going up the speed drops there's no way whatever when there is a headwind the first few days the boys were gunning it it was quick and i didn't speak up so basically we were doing some pretty good speeds where i was pretty much redlining the other boys were cruising ish and then we had a wee climb and i'm relying on the flat so we had to climb and those boys just put a little bit more power and i've got no power left at the other end of the cycling spectrum in some ways was aaron who you know has a really storied multi-sport background but in some ways was was a sort of a novice on the bike the first few days you know we're having you know serious concerns whether we're able to keep up most of my pure cyclists you know most amount multi-sport is there there are now cyclists and they looked it they were comfortable on a bike they looked natural on a bike whereas i was floundering anything more than a flat and i sort of started dropping back out the back so it's a tough day tough day thankfully a couple of boys helped me out got me through although i don't know she was pretty tough out there i guess the next concern is it's ten past six so the rest up here it's not gonna be huge so getting ready for tomorrow it's gonna be the next mission really just another day [Music] the biggest thing that the support crew had to face was uh the lack of time there's always issues with people's bikes there's all these things that you're trying to organize on the fly this is just a very short i think the first time we've stopped for coffee break so you know it's well-deserved and well ended a bit of r [Music] they like soft bread they don't like the crusty french loaves but the boys who do the driving do and mike likes four crisp sandwiches on soft bread at the end of this ride let's go shopping here we can buy bread we can buy jam i push the trolley you push the brown so we got the rue bay stage tomorrow which is 20 kilometers of cobbles we're having to put on uh wider tyres to run over the cobbles at wishing that we can run at a lower temperature to try and absorb up all the bumps so this is a really really important stage they stay from rest through to rue bay some of the route of the hell of the north so these cobblestones you know are pretty deep so these guys are pretty nervous this morning there's danger of pinch flats there's dangers of crashes don't actually know what they like you hear stories about they're huge and they've got gorges between them but i don't know what we'll find until we get every day there's been some epic aspects to each stage and today it's cobblestones and until you've ridden them you cannot begin to understand how much energy they take [Music] foreign oh look there's so much cycling history here i've never been here before and it's awesome to just to be here you know it almost brings a tear to your eye the last one i think was the worst yeah rougher's guts we've done a couple of laps of the velodrome and roger's organised access to have a look at the old um the old showers that the fellas traditionally take a wash in after puri bay for an all black fan it will be like going into the changing rooms at eaton park it's a very special place and one of the um most citrusy places in cycling so these are all the winners of cara roubaix over all the years so you're looking at some of the modern and some of the earlier greats oh yeah a lot of history in here so as a cycling fan like holy grail it's very exciting very exciting [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i get a bit more water yeah oh you got one of my bottles yeah i knew i literally got back your bottles bro um you're only 10 minutes 12 minutes behind the other guys actually you can gotta be way more than that to be honest oh i thought you'd be another five ten mikey passed me but just not to take a photo so you feel both those yeah well thanks yeah paul's the one that's suffering today the curry that he had last night i think has come back to well i hope it's just the curry otherwise he'll need to be isolated because he'll if he's got a virus he'll wipe the rest of us out feeling any better oh it's a bit rough today still feeling a bit sick can't really hold any food yeah but um keep the fills up now three are down one to go he's got a bit of a croquettes and he's battling he seems as though he's gonna uh he's gonna make it all right but he is struggling a lot today [Music] i couldn't eat i didn't feel terribly well at all but does he dizzy light-headed i couldn't pack enough energy down and it ended up being a real struggle so and it was it was really hard work it was hot i was struggling to get enough fluid and really didn't want to eat though i knew i needed to eat to have enough energy to get up the hills i'm just glad to have made that one good it was going to be a tough stage i didn't count on your stomach upset with it [Music] the real race for them started when the first mountain stage started and from there it was you know the strongest the strongest survive i sat down and did a calculation how many tens of thousands of times have i turned the pedal over that goes through your feet you know and there's just something i hadn't kind of credited was that your feet would get sore from all the pressure off the pedals just little things you don't expect you know i think i probably did more training on hills than anyone else i think that was basically there's no secret to it just training and i like the mountains because it's more fun than riding along a flat road which can get tedious my garmin it's very helpful after 12 minutes of riding it tells me how i am yesterday i said i was good i know you said it was fear i'm expecting tomorrow to tell me i'm poor 13 k's to the top turning a small one [Music] oh [Music] uh the body's feeling much better today so i got a really good light sleep last night um got lots of food in me so now all i've got in the stomach are butterflies it's uh 176 kilometers a day and they say up around 5000 meters climbing so nothing never done anything close to this before [Music] so [Music] just finished it off a little bit you okay brother getting damn hold out there back unbelievable about three seconds just keeps going on it keeps on good by the time we got to hairpin nine of our dues he just he got off he climbed off his bike sat on the wall and said um guys you go on i'm gonna go i want to go down to the car park there's always tomorrow johnny came out and and said stews in a real bad way straight away understood okay he's not going to get to the top without help he he was broken he has he was mentally exhausted as well as physically but we persuaded him get back on the bike and see how he felt at the next hairpin even if we had to push him up and so that's what we did we we took it in turns to push him up afterwards i trained really really hard i hadn't made all of my targets um just because work and fundraising and and depression um sort of all bit at various times um and i'd sort of at times felt like i was over preparing but really that that was the day it was all for um [Music] yeah that was it was good to have all that strength that day [Music] [Music] i realise we don't choose our emotions the emotions that i experienced on that stage were nothing i'd ever experienced before on a bike yeah it all came out yeah [Music] hey [Laughter] it's relief that we got stewie up there because i know how much of a big thing this is a great ring day yeah it's nice to be part of a team it's good i'm glad we were there for me i feel like my kneecaps are about to burst oh wow what a day five thousand five thousand vertical meters it's about almost 15 times up wellington's biggest hill oh 5000k 5000 meters [Music] where's the stop how about seven or eight pages [Applause] we've got all these beautiful streams we're crossing which would be really nice to sit in but for the fact that there's no water running down them are we in a big town tonight um i don't actually know if there's like a superhero or something yeah might be worth getting some clippers yeah so we're just working out we'll give stu a bit of a break at lunchtime we'll have a break in a couple hundred meters we've got to just come over this coal and then we've got a lunch stop i'll try and cool them down and then make the game plan as to how we're going to proceed as soon as you start to climb it it's like mid-30s it just just takes the energy the legs mixing and take over the energy is just deception just if you go if you're not out here cycling in 30 plus degrees you just don't get what it does to your body it just deception three of the guys that stayed back to help him uh push him over the next two hills and uh fingers crossed we can get him to the finish but it's still got another 60k to go another thousand meters of climbing so it's gonna be tough stew would have been in my mind one of the top two of the strongest guys here stu ex-winner of the tour of southland which is new zealand's premier race and he was one of the guys that i looked at i thought well i'm just not in the same league stu went over there with the most amazing cycling cv of all of us that day into mond he folded on hills that he would have had absolutely no problems with it was really hard for us because on one hand you're there and you're going well we want everyone to ride the whole tour but you're on that balancing act of going are we pushing him too hard then he won't be able to ride any of the other stages will really break him so it was a real hard balancing act [Music] i'd never seen mountains like that before or let alone ridden them i just knew that i wasn't going to give up i couldn't give up there was no no turning back on this one moments like that you really have to dig deep and draw something out of you because it's a brutal brutal sport and it's an even more brutal sport when you're not a professional athlete trying to do what the professionals do when you're down and you've had enough without somebody to actually tell you get off your bloody ass get up that hill i'm not sure that i'd have the willpower to do it [Music] realistically the goal was at the end to get everyone around toward the fronts and so you really had to work as a team no there's no way you could do it without a team and it's just new respect for the pro riders and the pro teams and how organized they are and what goes on behind the scenes that no one really sees that was the good thing about working as a team was we could all push each other along we all had our bad days including myself but there was always one or two hanging back to help those that were struggling to get through and the support team as well helping us out [Music] thank god it's cooler that's all i can say my prayers have been answered i'm amazed at how surprising my emotions have been in the last two weeks and will have captured that and i can't explain it don't know why it's just been epic [Music] oh [Music] i guess you made a comment at one stage buy that kind of a week or so into it just day after day of biking he said you actually look like you're part of the bike now whereas previously looked like you were fighting the bike it was just so amazing to see this guy who'd been you know he'd never been a cyclist before and you know had turned into one i think i agree with the tour i i got fitter i got stronger i lost some weight if you can shoot three or four or five kilos then that just helps i did recover and i like i got my confidence back a little bit started noticing others having bad days as well when i needed them they were there for me when they needed me i had to be there for them and that was how the camaraderie grew over the time [Applause] i was spent energy wise i was spent mentally i was spent i think even emotionally i was almost uh in tears riding on the bottom down here with the boys they didn't know but i'm like okay what so bill and the stu there came and rode with me and just said that and just uh sat there in the road and i was just accompanying with that drunk enough beers yesterday and that's my failure but i think it might be early to be tonight [Music] so uh last night i would have given myself a 50 chance to be starting today hot and cold sweats so yeah harder stage of the tour and not feeling hungry so we'll see how we go slowly but surely hopefully um no one said a dream was easy so see see what today's challenges bring me 19 days at the end of the day of some pretty big caves and some pretty big hills and for a non-cyclist specialist it's been been a journey that's for sure been incredible [Music] first couple of hours i could just feel my mood dropping like i've really been trying to help using my strength hopefully to benefit others and i was just i don't know feeling um not as free as i'd kind of hoped i suppose and um i'd really open the taps at the bottom of the hill felt really good actually just what the doctor ordered um and i feel a lot better now so glad i did it oh hanging in there live a long way up here [Music] one more coal and it's set it's the final coal down anyway was my grind up there's madeline's there if you want sugary too much sugar this is the man drinking coke [Music] [Music] the two people turned up here and quite precious yeah um those two people were i guess jason yeah uh mr well yeah mr fish yeah um it turns out that they've gone the wrong way have they they've decided to go back around and they're probably climbing up to that time you'd have been over so they're behind you the fatigue got to me i i missed an arrow and carried on for another 40 minutes and got got to a feed station and our in conversation with jason who'd also done the same we realized that we'd actually missed out one of the major mountain passes and i think the roger you sure are in the right place roger gets his map out and goes and we should have come this way well it didn't come their way so there was only only one thing for it is to retrace our steps take the the right road and finish the stage properly and for me that was a 223 kilometers a day with at least five and a half thousand meters of climbing [Music] sometimes we're got beyond that where it got to the can i actually make it to the top uh that's where you started digging into the memories of who you're doing it for what you're doing for my father passed away during the year so it was kind of first father's day without him but my sister took her own life on father's day sort of three years earlier i was diagnosed with depression about seven or eight years ago and so having had this personal experience with depression i felt like it was going to give me an opportunity to sort of share that experience with people myself with an autistic daughter who's quite severely autistic it's quite hard to get by sometimes the issue of mental health was high on the agenda and something special for me yeah baby that is what this has been about getting to this point unbelievable man unbelievable some pretty big emotions going through today yeah nothing left in the legs and it just throws a nice gentle little nine percent direction or somewhere around there just to just to suck the last little bits out it's just ticking off the miles it's like i've come this far stoked to be here on the top um because this is really the last best year and i suppose once you close this point um failing something catastrophic um pretty much all the boys will finish the tour but yeah that was a hard day don't know what i'm thinking is that he probably just needs to know asleep so that's that's the next option that one person it could even be me uh rides with him give us five minutes uh but i'm thinking that we need to give him an extra hour and a half um and then he can have a sleep and then we'll wake him up in an hour and then you two run for them i got into bed i think at 11 30. and then no sooner had i lied lay down then i started feeling kind of rumbling in my guts i think in midnight i was like oh man and had to run to the toilet and spend i think probably the next hour with this kind of crazy diarrhoea once that settled down i think it was probably two and a half two and a half hours you know just throwing up every every 15 or 20 minutes wishing that i'd chewed my pizza a little bit more carefully john had ended up being the default leader of the group for someone who had given a lot to the team it would have been really disappointing to see him not do that stage [Music] [Music] it was fantastic to give back john john pushed all of us around before that he was the one that made sure that we all got through i was so appreciative of how people helped me it's natural if i saw someone struggling to try and help them too well johnny's been the big strong man in the whole tour and pretty sad to see him get sucked down that way but he got through which was awesome you know had it not been for the team basically i would have been jumping on the train to paris without riding that stage to stage 20. they've done a fantastic job i mean it's not only epic for them individually but to the level of support that they're giving for what is really an important cause back home in new zealand is fantastic i mean for them to put so much effort into into this personally and to really raise money and support for what's a really good cause it's something that's you know how can you not get them behind them they've done well mixed emotions today it's uh end of adventure you're not sure what to take your take with it it's um yeah it's all a bit surreal today so the girls were doing the same thing as we were so they were riding all 21 stages the cause that they were writing for was to promote women's cycling the tour de france is a men's event so we joined them on the last stage which was good because they actually had a motorbike brigade going ahead and closing off roads the time i got to stage 21 i'd already mentally finished the race for me that was everything hard was over by then and it was actually a beautiful moment really it was about going on a mission and completing a mission and a part of the mission was raising funds and awareness about mental health what your body can do what your body can handle what your body is actually capable of is quite phenomenal 21 days 23 days with two risks so 21 day cycling you know to get up every day and do 180 170 200 210 and the next day and the next day and the next day was just it's you know i thought my legs are going to give at some point um digs inhibited when you see it on tv you really you don't get a good sense of of how incredible they are you know they're just these these little skinny guys that are sitting on their bikes looking like they're just out for a sunday sunday ride on stage looking forward to that champagne mate cut it out the ice i'm on the way i didn't think all eight of us would make it round uh not many people thought well eight of us would make it round i don't think so it shows that we all put in the work and shows that what can be done we joked about how much of an experiment it was trying to take a bunch of eight amateurs to ride that far and do everything that the pros did and also on the back of that raise awareness and money and you get the goosebumps on the back of your neck and you go we're gonna do this we're almost home then getting through it and having to go through the challenges they they face along the way is a real testament to them as individuals they just did the tour de france only the pros do that [Music] having done it and having uh devoted seven months training to it i would say that anyone of my level can do it but do not underestimate how physically and mentally tough a challenge it is it is it is massive massive [Music] you know it's been three and a half weeks and we've packed in memories that it takes you two or three years to accumulate in normal at the normal pace huge achievement for the guys huge support from all the people back in new zealand that were following us all the messages of support it grew from a common beginning to a to a family situation if you've been out there on your own struggling knowing you've got 140k to go in another two mountain climbs and you're struggling now i think you would have struggled to continue but having the guys there just got you through [Music] [Music] [Music] have you ever wondered if it's all worth it all those dreams to carry in your heart all the time i know i've been there for a while [Music] but there is [Music] [Music] and it's calling me higher [Music] rising from the ashes so much bigger than my fears [Applause]

Channel: Silver Eye Films

Views: 946,345

Keywords: tour de france, cycling, how to cycle incline, gear ratio, gears, cadance, cadence, trek, shimano, cobble stones, 2018, peloton, stage, average speed, hill climb, france, Alpe d'Huez, classic climb, 2022, One Day Ahead, One Day Ahead documentary, Cycling documentary, New Zealand, riding, cyclists, tour, Giro d’Italia, Vuelta de España, Tour de Suisse, Tour Down Under, Paris-Nice, Tirreno–Adriatico, Tour de Romandie, Critérium du Dauphiné, Volta a Catalunya, 2023, 2024

Id: 4L4sReM6iqo

Length: 51min 30sec (3090 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 21 2022